Checklists are hard, but still a good thing

> Checklists to pack for vacation.

A thousand times yes. Here's an older version of mine: https://honeypot.net/2023/01/13/my-travel-project.html

While I'm on vacation, I make notes about things I've forgotten. Near the bottom of that list is a reminder to add those notes to the template so I'll do them the next time I travel.

My wife thinks I'm nuts. OTOH, I'm so much more relaxed before we depart because I know that I have everything I'll need for a fun, comfortable trip. And if I don't, it's going to be some relatively minor long-tail thing that's never come up before, not something basic like "pack underwear".

> Checklists to pack for vacation

I often have to travel for work. Sometimes I have a fair bit of notice in advance and sometimes I don't. In either case, checklists are super handy for me. I generally use either Apple Notes or Obsidian for these (previously Emacs org-mode but it's less convenient for the "add an item from your phone" case than the other options).

For the "notice in advance" case, I'll start a packing checklist pretty much the moment I know I have to travel and I'll immediately write down just a sentence or two about the purpose/objective of the trip and add any special things I might need (e.g. a Saleae logic analyzer for debugging or a GoPro for documenting). As things get discussed and the trip gets closer I'll keep adding things to the list.

For the "not much advanced notice" case, I'll look back at previous checklists to find one that has a similar objective and basically just copy it wholesale and tweak. Super super useful keeping those old checklists around, even if they're only 80% correct for the next trip.

A massive plus one to that. Being "detail oriented" to me is a of knowing "what needs to be done" and "how can I sort it out". Checklists excel at it.

Also kinda related, but I'm a huge fan of the "getting things done"[0] philosophy. Putting things down on a list, helps ease so much of the anxiety about not knowing, planning the next item, and most of all, relieving the cognitive burden of having to remember, which most humans aren't built for. There's a (personal and individual) limit to how many tokens our wet neural networks can hold, and I'd rather use them to focus on the task, rather than having to remember the task from memory.

Get that on repeat mode, and boom, you have checklists!

My wife and friends are at times annoyed by how anal I am about pulling out my phone to note things down whenever a new thought or task appears for me, but I wouldn't change anything about that. So much so, my task manager app is the only one app on my phone and computer that I have a subscription for (other than news and entertainment stuff).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

checklists do wonders for my anxiety.

too often i'll have a sudden thought about "oh, i need to make sure to fix X" or "I cant forget to pack Y before the trip". My options to deal with those sudden thoughts are:

1. Do it immediately, which isn't always possible

2. Do it later, which means that I'll obsessively stress out about it because "what if I forget to do it? I need to make sure this stays at the forefront of my mind at all times."

3. Put it on a checklist and give myself permission to stop thinking about it until its time to do it

checklists for AI to track its state has been killer for getting the LLM to work through a process from end to end.

ive never considered using emojis as the checkboxes to compare between not done, in process, done, or failed though.

I often use a checklist version for travel packing, where every item simply goes after each other with a checkbox, instead of usual checklist with every new item going on new line.

> None of those contexts are anti-fragile.

Nassim Taleb (who coined the term), literally uses the aviation industry as a prime example of antifragility in his book[1], so I think our wires are getting crossed somewhere.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...

I also have a second list for "things to do to the house before travelling" - did I shut the windows, turn off the lights, empty the trash, etc - yup, it's all on the list I followed before I left.

They're similar, lists of tasks/items to check off. However, when most people talk about checklists they're often talking about it in particular contexts and a more deliberate construct than todo lists. Pilots, for instance, have pre-flight checklists. This is not an ad hoc todo list (the more common sense of "todo list") with arbitrary and possibly unrelated tasks (go to grocery store, pick up dry cleaning, outline paper).

Checklists, especially in system operations and safety contexts, also tend to have a bit of a procedural characteristic, possibly including conditional and even looping constructs or sub-procedures.

  - If HPA is energized
    - [ ] De-energize HPA
  - [ ] Enter radome

A todo list is a unique thing, it’s about remembering to do all the things you said you’d do. There’s no implied consistency from one todo list to another.

A checklist is used repeatedly, and it’s about completing a task (or set of tasks) to a certain standard. If you’re following a checklist, you’re aiming for consistency.

Checklists are usually for repeatable activities (or at least similar-enough ones).

I think there are two differences: urgency and immediacy. A checklist is urgent in a way a to-do list isn't. The sky will fall if a checklist is not followed when X happens, whereas a to-do list is kind of a nebulous list of nondescript tasks. A checklist's immediacy also implies a strict ordering, whereas a to-do list does not. For example, task A must be completed before task B or the sky will fall.

It's just a lot stricter operationally, which is why I think you'd get a lot of pushback trying to implement one for non-critical business tasks.

The semantics of list types is an underrated problem that probably holds back the market of software tutorials.

A todo list is typically a set of unrelated things to be performed once and annotated as "done." Something may be performed periodically, like iOS reminders adds take out the garbage on a weekly basis, but each performance is really its own item. Sometimes a todo list will have parent-child tasks.

A checklist is a two lists: one a template and the other the record of performing the checklist. The template and performance instance records are a set of related things which may or may not be ordered or conditional. A special type of checklist is an inspection checklist which may include results from performing a particular checklist item as well as the fact that it was performed.

The difficulty is that the more precise you make your recipe, the more you need to account for the specifics of the situation; which you cannot possibly know.

There is one time in my life that I recall legit burning a steak. I did what I had countless times before. Heated the pan until the oil started smoking, put on steak, and reduced stove temperature. Just like how I would have written the recipe before without a second thought. This time, however, the outside was thoroughly burnt before the inside even started to cook. The difference was I was using a cast iron pan for the first time, which has a lot more thermal mass than what I was used to. My old process relief on the steak cooling down the pan.

For recipes I'm reading, I've almost always found the temperature and time details to be nearly useless. If the recipe says to make at 400 F for 30 minutes, I bake on "high" (450F) until done. If I'm in someone else's kitchen, my cooking turns out a bit worse than when I'm at home.

This is a problem you always run into when writing down a process. You need to rely on the knowledge of the person following the process to apply it correctly to their specific situation. Trying to prescribe every detail does not work well.

By that definition, good recipes are vanishingly rare.

Of course I cc one file quickie programs all the time. What I am talking about is a whole directory of source files, and just "knowing" which ones are out of date and building the object files manually.

I still remember years ago trying to convince one dev to use make on a package with 20-30 source files.